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Sunday, October 11, 2015

As Hillary Clinton has shown during her 2016 Presidential campaign, as well as her 2008 campaign and every move in her political life, everything is calculated to follow public opinion. If she was a real leader she wouldn't have to wait to make these decisions.Recent examples include TPP, Keystone XL, and Black Lives Matter, where after a second meeting she decried racism as America's original sin and vowed (after Bernie Sanders issued his policy) to ban private for-profit prison corporations. Here is me laughing about that!

Before I learned that private prison corporations are funding her campaign

Clinton will always follow causes for her own benefit--I'll vote for candidate who wants to abolish all prisons https://t.co/1m2oi3FUPR

Hillary Clinton on Tuesday declined to say whether she supported the Keystone XL pipeline expansion, telling a New Hampshire voter that if the matter is still undecided by the time she becomes president, she will give him an answer then.

The question came from Bruce Blodgett, a software developer from Amherst, New Hampshire, who told CNN he identifies as a Republican and supports building the pipeline, the 1,179-mile-long project that would move oil from Canada to refineries in the United States.

During a town hall in Nashua, Blodgett asked, "As president, would you sign a bill, yes or no please, in favor of allowing the Keystone XL pipeline?"

"I thought she avoided the question completely. Her excuse was she didn't want to step on President Obama while he was still in office," he said. "I just thought that was a very weak answer. I just wanted to know where she stands on it one way or another."

Then in September after Clinton finally decided to answer the question Chris Cillizza wrote well in The Fix about why this hedge was wrong, especially when she has come out strongly on other issues still up for debate, like the Iran Nuclear Agreement, which was her excuse on Keystone.

Look. When you are running for president -- whether or not you served in the current administration -- you are going to be asked to take positions on issues that the current president is dealing with. As long as we hold elections that begin two years (or more) before the current president is set to leave office, that's going to be a thing candidates need to contend with.

just because it's politically disadvantageous to take a position doesn't mean Clinton should be allowed to avoid doing just that.

This was pure politics by Clinton. It was a gamble based on the idea that the disgust over her failure to answer a direct question would be far less damaging than the fallout if she did offer her opinion.

McKibben, as Bernie surrogate, dings Hillary. "Bernie Sanders came out against the Keystone pipeline in September [pause] September of 2011"